Whale watching on Stellwagen Bank

Another refreshing post to cool off  this summer: 

Off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, lies a large whale feeding area, the National Marine Sanctuary Stellwagen Bank, where from May until October a great many whales, mostly humpback, come to feed and play. Going out from Provincetown on the tip of the peninsula, several companies offer whale watching trips, that are very much worth doing. 

I had been on a whale watching trip close to Cape Town, South Africa, a few years earlier. I can tell you, that there are some very important things to keep in mind, if you want to photograph whales : 

 - take a large boat! You are less prone to seasickness when in a larger vessel. The first time around, I had been in an inflatable dinghy in rather rough seas dancing on the waves, which was not good.

- use your long lens sparingly! If you constantly look through a long tele zoom searching for disappearing whales in the waves, your seasickness will get worse and worse, even in calm waters. The horizon will swing up and down much more and to such an extent that it will only take minutes before you want to seek out a quiet side of the boat and forget about your photographer's goals... 

Having learnt those lessons first hand,  I did not get any good pictures on my first trip out ... 

I made up for those mistakes on the trip off the Boston coast. 

Breaching whale

Rolling whale

Blowing

the blowhole

Plenty left-overs for the gulls and terns

A stunning experience was, when a group of whales came  towards our ship, dived underneath - and came up on the other side! 
A very eery situation staring down from the railing, when the sea next to the ship's wall suddenly turns bubbly and light green ... 

and the next moment a whale breaks through the surface ... 

The big animals continue on their way like small battleships or submarines and leave us stunned and exhilarated. 


We also saw Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins

Enjoy!

Hot hot hot

Hot hot hot here in Germany. This July is on its way to qualify for the hottest month ever since the beginning of weather records in 1880. 

I may have written that climate change could be good for our garden. Yes - we may be able to keep Bougainvilleas and citrus trees flowering on our terraces, but there will likely be other victims. 

Soft leaved Hostas are showing extended burns, 

some ferns have shrivelled and disappeared. Not sure, this is due to a protracted lack of water in the intense heat, or whether heat and sunshine are agents of their own. Dahlias have all been eaten by slugs - next year we will keep them in pots -  and I am not hopeful for the little blue poppy that I was so proud of in cold June. It has disappeared completely now and I doubt we will see it back next spring. 

Strangely, I have seen flocks of starlings already practising for the annual flight down south, and squirrels on our terrace hiding nuts as storage for the winter .... is that because of the dryness and will autumn come earlier this year? 

A Lichtblick are the Camellias. They are surprisingly resilient and their hard leaves even withstand the heat on the stone terrace in pots in full sun. 

So what do we do, if we want to stay cool in a country, where very few office buildings and hardly any private houses or apartments have climatization?  We get in the car! And live up to the German saying : My car is my Castle. Here about 90% of cars have climatization ..

... or take a cold shower. 

Not everybody, though, enjoys a refreshing shower ...

"Hurry up with that terrifying water hose and bring a towel and don't fumble about with your camera!" 

The Photographic Gardening Diary : On the Terrace

With the continuing heat wave in Germany and temperatures of up to 36 °C during the day, our garden has stopped growing and gone into a summer recess to withstand the stress and preserve water.

This is the time for the terrace and the mediterranean plant displays thriving in pots.

We keep the Oleander pots in a large basement shaft in winter, which is covered with sheets of plexiglass and nearly frost-free. There, they keep their inflorescences during the winter months and open buds earlier.

Our potted blue agapanthus started with a single flower in a small pot from the garden center 15 years ago. Now we have four large pots and many, many flowers every summer and growing. They are deciduous and shed all leaves in autumn, when we put them in the garage, rather dry and dark, with just the heat of the car when it comes back in. There, we usually forget about them. Around March, when the new pale yellow sprouts appear, we move the pots out on the terrace and start watering and feeding.  Every couple of years or so, we plant them in bigger pots and divide the clumps. Garden literature says that they should sit tight in pots and should rarely be divided. In our experience it makes no difference : we divide them, whenever we want an extra pot, and they continue to thrive and bring out flowers reliably every year. 

This winter we have also tried to keep the bougainvilleas alive; together with the oleanders we held them in the basement shaft. Surprisingly, they have come back nicely and we hope to be able to repeat this for the next winters. Paul planted Geranium "Rozanne" underneath, a blue Verbena, Salvia officinalis and a dark  Ipomoea. I added some self-sown white poppy. It is a wild and unruly combination, but we like it. 

Enjoy!

The Photographic Gardening Diary : Federmohn

Federmohn ("plume poppy" or Macleaya cordata) is an imposing perennial in full flower in our garden now. It grows from nothing, from its dormant state in winter, up to three meters height every year in a couple of weeks. At the opening of our garden at the "Offene Gartenpforte" last year on a weekend in June, this was the plant that - to our surprise - caused the most comments and questions. Apparently, not many visitors knew this poppy. It is huge and dominating and needs a lot of space as it is quite invasive. Although it does not look at all like a poppy, and does not produce the typical poppy capsules and seeds, it belongs to the family of Papaveraceae. It has medicinal value and produces alkaloids with anti-bacterial and anti-fungal uses. 

In our garden it grows in two corners. Both areas have to be kept under strict control, and occasionally its underground shoots have to be ruthlessly cut off and dug out - otherwise it will overgrow all smaller perennials and shrubs - and nearly everything else in a mixed herbaceous border is smaller! 

Its large and dissected leaves have a strikingly blueish tint, that goes well with nearly all green backgrounds. Flowers are yellowish to a reddish orange. I had seen this plant first in front of a red brick wall in an English garden, but it is equally effective with a green background of a yew hedge or similar.  

Another species is Macleaya microcarpa, a bit smaller but otherwise difficult to distinguish from M. cordata. 

Pearl Fishing in Abu Dhabi

It is hot in the Rhein-Main-area in Germany now. At night the thermometer stays above 20 °C, during the day it goes up to 34° C.  On the nightly weather reports this classifies for "tropical nights ". As they are very rare here, why not take a splash and put in a refreshing post about pearl diving in Abu Dhabi!

Two years ago, when on a conference in Abu Dhabi, I took part in a pearl fishing trip. Pearl fishing in the Arabian waters goes back a long time. The earliest settlements of people on the Arabian coast around the areas of Dubai and Abu Dhabi were pearl fishers. In fact, the very poor early Arab economies on the Persian Gulf  were mainly reliant on pearl fishing since before 2000 BC and up until the 1920s, when artificial pearls were invented, and long before the oil industry started. 

We went out on a reconstructed motorized dhow in the shallow waters of the harbour.

When we had cruised a while and were out of the harbour, we expected our guides to take of their dishdashs and keffiyes and jump into the water. But they laughed and went aft to fetch a couple of cooled boxes filled with sea water full of pearl oysters! 

Every one of us chose an oyster and the guides showed us, how to open them with a special knife.

Pearls are imbedded in the oyster's flesh. They can be compared to a cyst, that builds around an injury in the mantle tissue, when the lining of the oyster is pierced or hurt by parasites or some other intrusion. Layers upon layers of calcium carbonate and some organic substances are added from the mollusk's mantle to form the more or less round pearl. The pearl's luster comes from the numerous translucent coatings.

 Sometimes, pearls are small and not easy to detect. You have to poke around in the oyster's flesh to feel for the hard substance and extract the pearl. Pearl oysters are not related to the edible oysters; the latter do not produce pearls with luster. 

Abu Dhabi started these tours a couple of years ago as history tours, to show tourists not only the famous shopping malls in the area, but also a bit of the history of the people there and the beginnings of the settlements on the coast of the Arab peninsula. 

"Our" oysters were raised in banks for that purpose.  Some visitors had to try and open several oysters, but in the end all of us "found" a pearl and it felt like christmas ... 

Plant of the Month : Acanthus

Acanthus mollis sends its spiky flowers up this month. When not in flower, it is a very nondescript plant: the leaves, when they come out of the ground, might easily be mistaken for dandelion leaves and be torn out by some ignorant gardener. Luckily the roots are thick rhizomes and cannot easily be destroyed. If you move this plant,  the old plant will usually come back in the old place from left over root fragments like a true weed. But with flowers, it is an architectural, ornamental, very elegant, classical plant, and the tall bicolor flowers leave a strong impression.

Its leaves have supposedly been inspiration for the capitals of the corinthian columns ... not quite, maybe a different or older species. Its English name is "Bear's breeches" - I have no idea why and couldn't find any explanation on google. 
In German, it is "Wahrer Bärenklau" meaning "bear's foot" - not to be confused with the rather toxic and non related "Gemeiner Bärenklau" (Heracleum spec.) plant. 

There is another species Acanthus spinosus, very similar, but with spiny leaves and flowers.  

Pluto's Heart

Inspired by the finding of a huge heart on the surface of the planet-not-any-more Pluto a couple of billion miles away, I put together an updated heart collection 

I made this image with the help of glycerol, a pipette, a piece of glass from an old frame and a heart cut out of red paper. Put glycerol drops on a sheet of glass, which is slightly elevated, and stick the heart underneath - the drops will reflect whatever is underneath and give lots of tiny reflections. It's fun to play around with the size and number of drops. For editing the image, I played around with Nik filters to give this slightly psychedelic effect.  


This heart collection goes into the "Being German" section, just to juxtapose and deflect from the general German bashing, which is en vogue at the moment by all the good people in the international press about our treatment of the poor Greek. Giving away over 100 billion Euros of German taxpayers' money to a country of 11 Mio. inhabitants, who neither seem to want it nor will pay it back, this costly folly must surely warrant a general outcry about heartlessness and worse. 

After a journey of more than nine years through our solar system, the "New Horizons" probe has brightened up the week!

Hearts and more

The Photographic Gardening Diary: Plant Compositions in July

Rose "Weiße Immensee" with a heavenly warm scent growing over Pinus mugo and Choisya. Its long shoots are best hanging down from a wall.

And here in combination with the huge Macleaya cordata to the right in front of the copper beech.

Polygonum "Firetail" with Allium sphaerocephalon mixed with dark red Heuchera in flower, Geranium himalayense and light blue Campanula "Pritchards Variety".

The white balls of Hydrangea "Annabelle" can be seen in many gardens now. These are "in-camera image overlays"  - to avoid photoshop, which I hate, because I am so inept at it and never have the patience. 

I had a few surprise visitors crawling or flying in ....

two snails conjugating in our driveway

Kleiner Kohlweißling (Pieris rapae)

Looks like a dangerous hornet and was at least 35 mm long, but is just "mimikry" - a copy-cat ,  a very large hover-fly, as can easily be recognized by her extra large eyes: a "Schwebfliege". 

The garden is full of bumble bees and honey-bees now - here on Allium sphaerocephalon

.. on a hosta flower

Prager Spaziergang - Architectural Details

Very many houses show a great variety of decorations from the Viennese Jugendstil era back to the 17th century. 

not one identical window